The Last Time
by AnHeiressofaSOLDIER
Summary: The TWEWY characters in the Sailor Moon universe. Shiki Misaki is the Champion of Justice, Sailor Moon, and is finally adjusting well to her new life (despite never wanting to be Sailor Moon, Moon Princess, or Moon anything), but that all begins to change when the aloof Sudoneku shows up in her life. Just who is this guy, exactly? Is he friend or foe? Moon Prism Power, Make Up! NxS


**Author's Note: Just some quick notes here:**

 **The Sailor Senshi will be fighting vampires. Yes, you heard that right. This is based on one of the Sailor Moon musicals that did that.**

 **This takes place during the arc that would've been the Doom Phantom one, but instead this story will be happening instead!**

 **But you can expect that most everything that happened during the Queen Beryl arc happened in this story's past, for the most part. Except that Konishi was Beryl in this=)**

 **One major difference, however, is that—even though all the girls have the memories of their past lives—there are holes in them.**

 **It's probably not too big a spoiler to say that Shiki is Princess Serenity in this and Neku is Prince Endymion, but none of the girls remember that (and neither does Neku and his friends) for story reasons.**

 **Also, Neku is kind of The Moonlight Knight in this, I guess (taking the part of Tuxedo Mask for part of the story), but Shiki has never met him before.**

 **When she first meets Neku at the start of this chapter (in their new lives, I mean), that really is their first time meeting on Earth.**

 **And please don't expect this to be a carbon copy of Sailor Moon, or The World Ends With You for that matter. It's not. That would take WAY TOO LONG to ever write (and it'd be somewhat boring to just copy all of Sailor Moon, but with the TWEWY characters in the roles, imo), and I'm trying to have twists and to make this fit both worlds pretty well.**

 **I'm still trying to give a lot of love and respect to both creations, however—and to honor them with this—and to have a lot of nods to canon.**

 **Also: Shiki is Sailor Moon, Coco is Sailor Mercury (this maybe should've been Rhyme, tbh, but I kind of wanted to break clichés and show that you CAN be intelligent while kind of talking like a Valley Girl and thus I chose Coco instead), Hype-chan (called just Hype in this) is Mars, Rhyme is Sailor Jupiter, and Eri is Sailor Venus:D**

 **Oh, and Mr. Mew is Artemis and Hype-chan's own Mr. Mew—dubbed "Ms. Nyan" here, and being a girl for the purposes of this novel—is Luna.**

 **Anyway, this whole story is for my dear friend, Celine! I hope that you like this, darling. I remember seeing a picture of Aqua from Kingdom Hearts as a Reaper in your gallery once, and that inspired me to do this: because I thought Coco in this game can maybe kind of look like Aqua did in that picture, in certain ways. Especially since it was blue, and Mercury wears blue, which just got my brain a thinking. Anyway, I love you lots, and I hope you're having a great day! -hugs-**

 **And speaking of Celine, her favorite character of all time is Aqua—and her favorite pairing of all time is Vanitas/Aqua—so for that reason, I decided to give them cameos in this fic, as this is for her. They're Shiki's Earth parents, and play a minor role, so just be aware of that. They're the only KH characters in this story:)**

 **Anyway, with ALL of this finally off my chest, I'm going to just shut up now and hope that you guys enjoy the story (especially if you know Sailor Moon, which you may or may not need to understand to be able to completely grasp this story).**

 **Thanks for reading!**

 **-Shanna**

 **The Last Time**

 **Chapter One**

 **Shiki's PoV**

Shiki shot her hand into the air—an array of light coming towards her person and alighting the sky, and also coloring her nails, as she did so.

At once, she was lifted up into the stratosphere, and a warmth she hadn't known since her mother, Nao, had held her in her arms that last time enveloped her.

Her glasses melted away as if they'd never been there in the first place—and as if she didn't at all need them to see; and really, when she was like this, she didn't—and her brown eyes opened up wider, looking at the sky above her and truly trying to _see_.

Her large green shirt left her body—and though Shiki usually liked it as a kind of comfort blanket, she did find more confidence when she transformed into Sailor Moon, and so could somewhat enjoy wearing the mini-skirt and all—and her skort went from a white color to navy blue, just as her pink slippers faded away into massive red boots.

Lastly—but certainly not least—her Mr. Mew plushie became animated, as he only ever truly did when Shiki used the power of the Crystal; and she immediately felt a connection to him that no words could ever dare explain.

…But all of this was before her change completely drifted away, of course, and she was left having to deal with vampires that she really didn't want to mess with at all.

Never did Shiki realize just how much she _wasn't_ a fighter, until a song of war was forced to play in her veins and this was sadly no exception.

Right now, standing right outside of Ten-Four, Shiki didn't have the other girls to help her as she usually would.

Usually, by this time, Eri would be using some of her laser powers to injure the menace and settle it down some, so that Shiki herself could deal the final blow.

Shiki didn't have the luxury of that happening for her now, however, and so she decided she needed to act—even without Mr. Mew directing her to for a change.

"I need to run this guy down before he bites me and turns me into a vampire, which would be even worse than anything I've had to go through yet!" Shiki said to herself, already imagining the creature's fangs embedding into her skin like a knife, and trying to think of some magical way to combat it.

The "magical way" ended up being one of her "Sailor Moon Super Kicks", that really wasn't very super at all.

As Shiki had wound her leg up to jab at the vampire with, she had found that she really hadn't thought any of this through at all.

She'd just wanted to shatter the monster's teeth before they could hurt her, damnit, but she'd somehow completely missed, and was now rolling onto the ground from where she had fallen.

It hurt. A lot.

As Shiki rolled, and tried to get some traction in order to stop, and rolled, and tried to get even _more_ traction to stop, she thought she should've been used to this kind of thing by now.

Her body had been battered and bruised enough times, after all, but she found that the scrapes she was now getting all over her legs made her want to scream.

And so Shiki actually thought about shouting, as she had on her first day out on the field.

She knew that she could use a power in her barrettes that way—that would magnify the sound and cause a sort of earthquake to happen, but as it was, Shiki didn't want to risk endangering the townsfolk that way at all.

And so she suffered in silence, and finally came to a stop.

Just as she was finally getting to her feet, the assailant picked the magical girl up by the collar of her shirt and brought her too close to him for comfort.

Shiki was able to get a good look at some of the nice clothes located in Ten-Four as this happened—a comely purple dress especially getting her attention, that she'd once hoped to design something similar to with Eri—and so Shiki found comfort in that maybe her death wouldn't be a complete nightmare. Maybe she'd get to see some nice things before she perished.

But just as she was about to give up all hope, the vampire dropped dead—err, again?—and Shiki saw someone out of the corner of her eye whom had terrible fashion sense, and who blended into the shadows far too well, but had seemingly come to help her.

Mystified, Shiki found herself wondering just who the stranger was. And why they weren't Rhyme—saving her with some sort of lecture about how she couldn't give up, "because it was always darkest before the dawn" and all that—but instead a male who looked like his greatest dreams had been chased away forever, by the depressing look he wore on his face.

"You-"

But before Shiki could even finish whatever sentence she might have tried to articulate, the boy with the orange hair and icy-blue eyes threw some sort of red blast towards her.

It looked like fire, and Shiki tried to get out of the way—thinking that maybe this person meant to hurt her, after all; oh, where was her Moon Stick when she needed it? So that she could try to counter one of his explosions with her own—but for the most part it whirled past her, and struck the vampire into a building.

Oddly, the older male didn't look too put-out by what had just happened to him. In fact, he even somewhat smirked—the lollipop he'd been sucking on in his mouth not even drifting as he did so at all.

Shiki considered the fact that the two gingers were maybe working together, secretly, and this was their way of trying to throw her off the trail.

But she couldn't really understand why they'd see her as such a formidable foe, if that was the case, because she'd never even faced these guys as Sailor Moon before.

For whatever reason—call it the goodness or the foolishness in her heart, she supposed—Shiki was about to go to the fallen vampire, despite the fact that he'd just been coming after her, and to ask him about it all.

However, as it happened, Shiki found she couldn't move even remotely

Oh… so spiky's blast hadn't completely gone past her, after all. Instead, it looked like some sort of barrier he'd created had linked around her legs, and was now keeping her in place.

"What the hell's wrong with you?!" Shiki bellowed, curling her hands into fists at her side and fighting the urge to cry. "Why are you doing this? I thought you-"

"Pfft. Don't feel all betrayed when it comes to me," the guy said, tossing a reluctant look her way, it seemed, as he hid his face in his collar. "I _did_ save you, and that's what I intended to do from the get-go, but I also don't want you stalking me and asking me questions when I try to leave here. You feel me? For that reason, you'll be held in place until I'm gone. But in the second that you're free, I suggest you leave before Mr. Forceps here gets to his feet."

Right, Shiki reminded herself. Vampires were supposed to be vulnerable to fire, and so that person the fourteen-year-old looking boy had just knocked out must have been recovering…

But even though Sailor Moon now understood that this mystery man really _had_ been interested in allying with her, and hadn't stabbed her in the back at all, she still couldn't help feeling hurt.

"I'm CAT, by the way," the boy told her, flipping a pin into the air and then instantly disappearing.

Shiki watched the place that he'd left for a long time, feeling disheartened.

And the moment she noticed that she could finally tap her toes to the beat that the vampire was whistling just beside her, Shiki took CAT up on his advice and ran far, far away from the place.

…

Shiki ended up going to Coco's after that strange encounter.

It wouldn't have been her first choice—as Eri was her best friend, decoy princess, and the person's house she was the most used to being in—but at the moment she didn't care that she wasn't getting exactly what she wanted.

But fortunately, in running a very successful little shop, Coco—their Sailor Mercury, as it was—had a very nicely furnished flat with her parents.

Most of it was Gothic Lolita stuff—as Shiki thought she could see many black tutus pouring out of some of the brown drawers around her—but there were also some black stars hanging in doorways here and there, and pink hairspray all over the place.

Shiki thought this was maybe because Coco had fallen in love with "American Idol" during season three, and when Simon had said they didn't want the pink and black adoring Diana DeGarmo in their midst, Coco had taken it upon herself to prove that that color combination _could_ work, but Shiki wasn't sure.

"So, like, you were attacked by vampires today, Shiki? How odd, that Mr. Mew and Ms. Nyan didn't sense anything… And oh my gosh, it's even weirder that we didn't get the message you sent us on our communicators!"

Coco put a strand of blue hair behind her ear as she said this—pouring Shiki some tea as she did so, and Shiki couldn't have been more grateful for it. And even moreso when Shiki noted that the younger girl was now cutting up some lemons in a special, artistic way to put into all of their glasses.

Shiki could tell that Eri—her Sailor Venus, her fashion idol and partner, and platonic soul mate—very much upset. But if she was disappointed in her own inaction, or how Shiki had handled herself, was hard to see.

"And you say you couldn't contact us at all, and that you couldn't get your Moon Stick to appear? Shiki, you don't think you _don't_ want to be Sailor Moon again, do you? The last time that happened, Queen Nao had to step in and remind you of yourself. And give you a new weapon, to boot."

At once, Shiki was waving away Eri's comment—feeling very much embarrassed, though she knew that Eri had meant no harm at all by her line of questioning. "Believe me, Eri. I've been enjoying being Sailor Moon lately, and aiding people that way. I was even liking being able to compare my new record with my old one, and seeing how I improved, but… today the chance to do much at all just seemed lost to me, and I hate it so much."

Shiki ducked her head at this, and wondered—as she did so—if her face was, perhaps, looking as downtrodden as CAT's had earlier.

Hype—her long, blonde hair spilling over her shoulders, as she angrily painted a picture with many red paints in it—finally let her piece known, and Shiki had to wonder if it was because she herself was feeling so awful about things that the younger girl chose to be kind and completely on her side for once.

"We need to find a way to combat this threat," Hype whispered, gently. "From what you were saying earlier, Shiki, the vampire that attacked you seemed like a bit of a joke. But if there are other ones—ones that actually are dangerous—we need to make sure that we spill their blood like this, and, uhm, not the other way around."

And to say that all of the other girls gasped at their comrade's words would've been an understatement.

They were all startled, that was for sure—as they exchanged glances with each other—and Shiki found herself wondering what had caused such a violent mood to descent down onto Hype. She was usually more insecure than this.

And unsurprisingly, it was Rhyme who was the most shocked by Hype's blunt anger.

The sports-y girl whispered something to herself, then, and Shiki wondered if it was perhaps some of the comedy routine she'd once done with her brother, Beat, that she was using to try and calm herself.

"Violence is never the answer, Hype, though I can see where you're coming from, with our princess being in danger and all.

"I also know this is ironic coming from me, since I'm the princess' main bodyguard, but I only fight when I have to. And I think… I think we should make sure these vampires are really evil before we go after them.

"Actually, that guy that trapped Shiki in place seems much more diabolical to me, when comparing him to the vampire, but I don't really know. Hehe."

Shiki was just about to reach across the table they were all sitting at, to put a hand atop Rhyme's own and to let her know that she didn't have to feel awkward about the way she felt on this topic—Shiki herself thought that the vampire had seemed somewhat laughable when compared to CAT herself—but she didn't. She didn't because it was in that moment she noticed just how quiet Mr. Mew and Ms. Nyan were being.

Shiki and Hype had both changed into their Sailor Senshi selves earlier, so that their two kitty companions could talk, so why didn't they seem to have anything to add to the matter?

"What do you think about all of this, Mr. Mew?" Shiki asked, pressing one of the barrettes in her hair, as she wondered if maybe it would've been better to have just activated it in the middle of the fight—and to have knocked the two men out—after all.

Ms. Nyan put a paw atop Mr. Mew's then, and seemed to be looking down for whatever reason.

But finally, Shiki's own feline answered her. "There was something about the jerk that reminded me of you, Shiki. Not that I think you're a jerk, of course, though he did seem horrible to me…

"But, my main point is, 'CAT' seemed somehow lonely to me today—as lonely as you were before you found the girls. He seems empty and in need of a friendship, even if he won't say it, and that… Maybe that's something the two of you have in common."

Shiki chewed on that—trying to think back on all that she'd gathered from the "CAT" person, as the smell of lemon cookies from Coco's mom wafted in the air.

Honestly, Cat had acted like he hated people more than needed them to Shiki, but maybe… maybe that was just some sort of defense he'd gathered, because he'd been hurt in the past?

Not knowing what to think at all anymore, Shiki fell backwards and simply lied on the floor—feeling suddenly tired, as she thought about all that she'd discovered.

Mr. Mew crawled atop her stomach then and cuddled with her. Shiki was glad for it, and she petted him whilst feeling lost.

Meanwhile, Rhyme was talking to Coco about how she'd learned to advance her powers some, so that she could use thunder, lightning, and even static electricity to her advantage.

Coco was clearly impressed by that—and being quite the chipper girl—she didn't seem at all discouraged that she herself had only just learned how to turn her mist into ice, for only a short moment in time.

Eri and Hype covered Shiki up with a blanket, as she began to drift off. And as Shiki fell asleep, she dreamed.

…

 _She was pretty sure that she was remembering her past life now, and not just making this up._

 _But though Shiki had gotten most of her memories back during the battle with Konishi_ _and Queen Metalia, there were still some things she was uncertain about._

 _The princess was on Earth now, for some reason—not too surprising, Shiki thought, as she'd come to Earth many a time in her past life, and had come to love it; that was why her mother had chosen to reincarnate them all on that particular planet, after all—and she seemed to be sitting on a sidewalk, acting like a denizen of the place, as she sang a song about growth to the green plants swelling up beside her._

 _Well, "swelling up" probably wasn't the best way to put it, Shiki had decided then. Plants on Earth grew very slow, after all, but she still admired them and their greenery so very much._

 _In fact, that was why she was doing what she was now: she'd somewhat deluded herself into thinking that if she sang to them, they might grow faster with her by their side._

 _Or, at the very least, if they swayed in the slight wind she made for them when she sang, at least Shiki could pretend that their movement was them becoming the things they were always meant to be, and not just her artifice._

 _It was then that Shiki noticed that someone had come up beside her. And at first, she had thought that maybe he was going to drop some change at her feet—in perhaps thinking that she was trying to serenade people for money._

 _Or maybe he meant to harm her, as he was wearing a kitsune mask. And as Shiki understood it, people on this planet usually only wore masks when they meant to do something treacherous, in order to hide their face from their would-be-victims._

 _The kid in the kitsune mask didn't do either of these things, however._

 _Instead, he sat down beside Shiki, and rather serenely—despite the fact that he seemed to be kind of irked—he said to her, "You really shouldn't be doing that, y'know. If you came to be a tree hugger, you're in the wrong city. Shibuya's more of a concrete jungle, than one with plants, fungi, or any of that crap. I think I like it better that way, too."_

 _And despite the fact that he'd just insulted her—and hinted that he wanted her to go away, on the off-chance that her "magic" in this particular area might work—Shiki couldn't help but to laugh, and to softly shove the stranger in his left shoulder._

 _"_ _Haven't you ever thought about plants growing in_ between _the cracks as a happy medium, sir? You're very silly, you know that? And there's very clearly some sort of oxygen-providing-flora around this area somewhere, or else you wouldn't be able to breathe, as I understand it._

 _"_ _And besides, things growing around here—but being held down by man-made things… wouldn't that fit your viewpoint, better? You seem to be the anarchist type, who thinks that lawlessness is the true order and all that, I mean. So what better way than this, to find another reason to hate the Man?"_

 _And though Shiki didn't agree with that sentiment at all—she was a princess of a monarchy, after all, and of course thought that every place needed some system of government—she didn't have any venom in her voice towards Kitsune's ideas at all._

 _And maybe in realizing that, he shoved her own shoulder at her words and smiled just the slightest bit._

…

Shiki awoke in her room the next morning feeling somewhat confused, and wondering if it had been one of the girls that had carried her home (Hype, probably; and if that was the case, Shiki felt terrible, because the two of them had their spats some days, and yet… no one took their "duty to the princess" more seriously than she did), or her father.

Whatever the case, Shiki decided right then and there that she was going to stop staying up so late, if she could help it, so that something like this would hopefully never happen again.

And if it did… Well, maybe she could swear off the chocolate some, so she at least wouldn't be as heavy when people had to lug her around?

Shiki ran down the stairs as fast as she could, when she was dressed and cleaned—feeling as though she was running late, but being unable to prove it, as her alarm clock had broken and she really didn't know how to use her new phone—and found that her mom and dad were already gone.

Feeling somewhat disappointed (though knowing that she shouldn't be, because even days when she was up on time, her teacher mother and comic bookstore owning father were often already gone), Shiki had to wonder if Mr. Mew had, indeed, been right about her and this "CAT" person both seeking interactions.

Shiki quickly made herself a bowl of Lucky Charms—knowing firsthand how Rhyme would probably chew her out for not having a more balanced breakfast, if she knew—and headed off to school.

She was running today—having already missed the bus—but fortunately school wasn't too far away, so in booking it Shiki was able to make it in time.

This was a good thing, because she'd been very seriously thinking about transforming into Sailor Moon—and using some of her powered jumps—to make it in time if she had had to. But here Shiki was instead, being the poster child for hard work rewarding you and cheating being very, very bad.

…That didn't mean that she didn't feel absolutely, pooped, however. And Shiki wagered that she probably smelt very, very bad, too. But that was nothing that a shower in gym wouldn't fix!

She was kind of daydreaming about that cold water, on a surprisingly hot day like today—and the cherry scented body wash that she'd be getting to shortly, even—and so Shiki didn't exactly notice it, when a new student was presented at the front of the classroom.

In fact, it wasn't until everyone began whispering that the guy was very effeminate, and could probably wear dresses better than they could, that Shiki got wind of him.

Yoshiya Kiryu was his name, apparently, and he seemed pretty rich to Shiki.

She spared any comments in her head about him being "girly" or "metro" at all—as in remembering the dream that she'd had last night, Shiki thought that Kitsune had been right, in some ways, that they should break some boundaries down.

So if this guy wanted to wear eyeliner, get purple contacts, and have better looking hair than hers, who was she to judge?

In fact, Shiki was pretty sure that he and Coco would get along famously. Joshua—as the transfer student was now instructing everyone to call him—apparently wanted his eyes to be an unnatural color, just as Coco liked her hair to be like the rainbow.

"Now, I want you all to treat Joshua here very sweetly—and with respect—and I'm sure if you do that, you'll all get to be very good friends with him!" their sensei was concluding, while Joshua, meanwhile, looking at Eri with a sort of cruel look and Eri herself seemed to be swooning over him.

Shiki sighed, and face-palmed… Which made it even _more_ awkward when Josh ended up sitting beside her in class.

At once, Shiki felt like the worst person on the planet. What if Joshua had taken her motion just now to mean that she didn't want to be around him, or that he'd done something unorthodox?!

But that didn't end up being the case.

Joshua smiled at Shiki warmly, making her feel very good for a short moment, and it wouldn't be until later that the unorthodox quality from _him_ would end up occurring.

It was during math class, when everyone was doing calculus.

It was much later in the day—after lunch, even—and all the teenagers were clearly wanting to go home, so later Shiki thought that maybe she could contribute Joshua's actions to that reason.

But when they were taking a test that period—and Shiki, surprisingly having studied, was just looking at the clock, wondering when the monotony would end, because she was already done with her quiz—she noted some sort of blue magic seeming to come from Joshua's fingertips.

And just as she'd noted it, she began feeling pulled by it.

Shiki knew that she was in some sort of trance-she'd felt this way before, when all her memories had come flooding back to her, after she'd fought Kitaniji, and all the Rainbow Crystals had come together through her power to create the legendary Silver Crystal.

Really, she knew that she should have been able to fight such things at this point in her life, but Shiki couldn't find any will within her when Joshua was playing puppet master at all. Instead, she was just his play thing.

And as it happened, Shiki hadn't been able to avoid flashing back to what had happened to her through CAT just the other day, and angry tears began falling down her face and she found that she wanted to make Joshua bleed.

She brought her chair up to Yoshiya's own desk—and Shiki was beyond surprised and horrified that no one seemed to have noticed this at all—and began filling out his test for him, with the (for once) correct answers that she had just put down in her own pamphlet.

During the times that she wasn't having to look down—in order to make sure she wasn't filling in the wrong circles for certain questions—Shiki looked up and glared at Joshua with everything she was worth.

And he, meanwhile, just smiled chillingly at her.

Finally, it was over. Shiki finished his damn assignment for him, pulled away from the teen as fast as she was able to, and watched him put the work in the tray on the teacher's desk with pure loathing.

Suddenly, Shiki found herself wishing that she'd actually flunked her test, so that he would've failed his own.

She didn't care what her parents would have said, she just didn't want to give this Yoshiya Kiryu any satisfaction after using her that way.

But she knew that she'd probably made them both have the top marks in the class; Shiki laughed at the idea, bitterly.

…

As cherry blossoms fell down from the trees above her at Molco, to somehow make everything new and better as they always did, Shiki decided that she wasn't going to tell her fellow Sailor Senshi what had happened to her during arithmetic. It would've been far too humiliating to, but she was still taking matters into her own hands in another way.

Having gone back to where she'd met CAT the other day, Shiki had transformed into Sailor Moon again, and was praying to the God she used to worship on the Moon that the guy would show up.

Shiki was about to give up on him—to idle the time away, she'd been practicing some ballet, and through it she thought she might have been close to gaining a new transformation: hopefully one that would even give her something new, like Eri's "Love Me Chain"—when he suddenly made his appearance known.

CAT was standing in a tree. And if Shiki had been in better spirits, she might've laughed about it, because cats and trees went hand-in-hand.

There were also many a fictional male who had an affinity for trees, Shiki thought, somewhat stereotyping.

And because of her own actions, CAT must have been stereotyping himself—for leaping down from the Sycamore and walking over towards her, the Spicy-Tuna-Roll, as Shiki was now calling him. muttered, "Y'know, if you wanted to get my attention, there were other ways than trying to seduce me with that dance routine, Stalker. And you don't look that good in doing ballet in such a short skirt, by the way. Your legs are kind of chubby."

Shiki ignored the last part of his statement, and it pained her to do so—though really, she knew that he'd been reaching in trying to come up with the last insult, but why he thought he needed to insult her at all, Shiki didn't know—and instead focused on the first one.

"Oh, shut up! I wasn't trying to seduce anyone! I wasn't even truly dancing. Instead, I was trying to transform into a stronger version of myself. And be glad that I didn't, because anyone who gets too close to the light we emit when we transform would be obliterated. But ugh. Why am I even bothering trying to explain any of this to you?

"Look, the reason I'm here is because I have a bone to pick with you, _Manipulator_ , and you can either give me a clear answer or I can beat it out of you."

Threatening anyone was something Shiki had never wanted to do. That was something that should've been left to the evils of the world:

She remembered far too well when the Earth had threatened her, and the Silver Millennium, and had ended up destroying everything, so Shiki certainly didn't want anyone to feel under someone else's thumb like she once had, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

At the very least, CAT had it within him to look slightly abashed. His eyes became relaxed—and maybe even repentant—for a slight moment, and Shiki found relief then, because through this she understood that he just wasn't another Joshua.

"Look, if this is about what I did to you yesterday, I'm sorry. I didn't think that you should kill the vampire, but he kept coming after you, so I did what I had to do: I spared his life, but I also temporarily restrained him so you could get away safely. I'm sorry if that doesn't please your murderous tendencies, but-"

At that, Shiki felt as though she'd been kidney-punched, and she looked into Sudoneku's eyes imploringly, then. Begging him to understand.

 _I guess it doesn't matter that me and the Senshi have never fought this guy before,_ she thought then. _If he's read up on the team, maybe he thinks that we just kill any villain and don't even give them the slightest chance, but that's not the case._

Shiki wanted to reassure her unlikely companion that he had it all wrong with words, but at the last moment she thought better of it…

If he truly was as powerful as Joshua was, maybe it would be best to let him think that she killed without a thought. Maybe that way he wouldn't risk using any of his crazy mumbo-jumbo on her.

"I'm not talking about _that_!" Shiki complained, ringing her hands together and feeling awkward that she didn't have Mr. Mew to hold onto for a change, but she'd thought she'd leave him in her room today and let him get some rest. "I'm talking about how someone came to my school today, and used the bizarre abilities that you seem to have, and controlled me for a long period of time! I'd never been more scared in my life! And all for just a petty test! So tell me, do you know this person at all? Do you have anything to do with it?!"

Somewhere in the back of her mind, Shiki knew that she was potentially giving too much information away, but she couldn't help it.

And for what it was worth, CAT didn't seem to notice it.

Instead, his face had seemed to go ashy-white, and he told her at last—stepping away from her, when just a moment ago it had looked like he had meant to put his hands on her shoulders, Shiki thought—"I think I know who you're talking about, and you should most definitely stay away from him!"

Shiki threw her hands up into the air, as if to say, _Yeah, that's so easy to do, since we go to the same school and he's in my class and all,_ but the moment she did that, CAT darted towards her, shoved her arms down, and whispered harshly into her ear, "No, don't do that! That's a sign of submission, and vampire powers will work even _more_ easily on you that way, stupid!"

Shiki pulled away from CAT at once. She didn't at all like being touched by threatening strangers.

And though she couldn't have proved it now—for he was doing a good job of hiding his teeth from her in this moment—she could've sworn she'd heard fangs lengthen and bite into his lower lip as he'd talked to her.

Sailor Moon tried to put it at the back of her mind, however. CAT was providing her with a lot of useful information—and she didn't want to get all nervous and potentially send him away because of it—so she instead asked the million-dollar question:

"Who are you? You haven't hidden your face from me, so I could easily look up information about you if I wanted to. But I won't do that, because I sense you don't want me to… But can you give me anything? Anything that tells me you're safe, that I can trust you, and that I shouldn't be warning the public about you right now?"

At Shiki's question, the boy scoffed. Shiki was certain then that he wouldn't tell her anything.

But instead of just ignoring her completely, he came up close to her again—so much so, that Shiki was starting to fret and desperately hoped to summon her Moon Stick, but to no avail—tapped the jewel in her tiara and fairly replied that, "You keep your own identity hidden through this tiara, don'chu, Sailor Moon? Therefore, all I know about you is from what my… employers have told me about you before. And even they didn't know much. So why, oh why, should I even hint to you who I am?"

 _He's speaking of past employers? Of enemies we've fought in the past, that he maybe was in league with, but never got to assist because we defeated their leaders before he could help?_ Shiki thought, as she averted her eyes from him.

But instead of accusing CAT of any of this—for better or for worse—decided to try and see the good in people, as she often did, and instead answered him with, "Because 'CAT' sounds like a pseudonym for someone who wants to be famous. You want everyone to know who you are, right? So tell me your name, and I'll be one of the first to begin getting you recognized."

The ginger smirked, and pulled away from Shiki finally. She was glad for it, because if he'd continue to press on her tiara—a valuable weapon in her arsenal—she knew she would've had to fight him.

He was flipping a pin again, and after having seen him do it once before, Shiki knew that the mysterious figure was planning to disappear through it once more.

And so he did.

But somehow and someway, before he was completely gone, Shiki heard a voice in the air. "'Sudoneku' will do wonderfully from you, I guess.

"And, oh… please do stay away from Joshua."

…

For the next few weeks, not many exciting things happened in Shiki's life (though her parents were home on more Friday nights now, so Shiki enjoyed getting to eat pizza and play some board games with them on those nights).

She was still keeping her second meeting with Sudoneku a secret, as well as everything that had happened with Joshua.

If Mr. Mew and Ms. Nyan ever found out—and sometimes when Mr. Mew looked at her, Shiki got the feeling that he _could_ tell she was being less than truthful about something, but that was just Mr. Mew for you—she was aware of how disappointed they'd be in her, and how they'd think her silence and secrets were tearing a hole in the group.

But Shiki's quietness came less from the fact that she didn't want to tell the girls, but more because she saw no reason to.

She hadn't seen Sudoneku since the time he'd given her his new name (though Shiki knew that even that was some sort of alias)… she hadn't come across any vampires, and even Joshua hadn't screwed with her again and was acting pretty civil and normal (Shiki was by no means trusting him or letting her guard down around him, however), so Shiki was almost left feeling that everything that had happened two weeks ago had just been a dream.

Even her connection to her powers was strong again. Shiki told herself that it must have been a fluke that had kept her communicator from working—and her Moon Stick from showing up—before.

…Either that, or the memory she'd just had of her mother bathing her in cherry blossom water from the Earth—and each of the girls and their moms showing up with neat gifts for her christening—was making her feel closer to her true home than ever before, and thus that was effecting her abilities in a mighty way.

"I don't understand how you've ever gotten by without being able to cook," Eri was laughing with Rhyme now, as all five girls walked around a barbecuing festival that was being held in the street, that Raimu was trying to get recipes from. "I mean, you and Beat are often on your own—with your mom and dad being important business execs and whatnot—so I just assumed that you had to be at the helms of things. And I know for a fact that Beat can't cook."

"Unfortunately I wasn't at the helm of things, Eri. I just know how to jazz up some microwave dinners pretty well, and make them look like they're a nutritious, home-cooked meal. That has to count for something, right?"

"But what I don't understand is why you're only now owning up to all of this, Rhyme," Shiki finally jumped into the conversation, as she was pulled away from her thoughts by someone trying to sell barbecue meatballs on steak fries.

Shiki was sure that the salesman was trying to make it seem like they were some kind of "edible art" suckers, but she wasn't convinced.

She'd never been a big fan of barbecue, anyway. It was probably one of the only few things from America that she wasn't fond of, to be honest, as she was actually a pretty big fan of that culture.

Coco looked thrilled by it, however, and ordered ten of them.

Shiki rolled her eyes. Leave it to her friend to get overly-excited about anything with more than one color to it.

"Because. Even I, with all the seasoning I have, have found microwave dinners to be completely bland. It's time to move up, and learning to cook some barbecue from some experts here is probably the answer to my query. Beat would absolutely love it."

That was true enough, Shiki thought as she absentmindedly nodded her head and thought about getting some mashed potatoes.

At least unlike Rhyme, Beat wasn't eating things like Salisbury steak all the time, and had often been able to mix it up with some teriyaki when he'd gone out to dinner with Shiki a few times.

Actually, Shiki now had to wonder why they didn't invite Beat to hang out with them more often than they did. Surely they could put some of their Sailor Senshi meetings on hold to entertain the poor guy every now and then, couldn't they?

"Okay," Hype said suddenly, interrupting the other three girls' conversation with a certain edge to her voice. "Am I the only one who's seeing a girl with graffiti-looking black wings flying around?"

To be honest, Shiki hadn't been paying much attention to Hype at all. It was bad—she knew that it was—but she had thought that Hype had been fine.

In not liking barbecue much herself, Hype had taken to sitting at a chair at one of the booths—it had been a good thing, because she sometimes got winded if she was out in the sun too long, ironically; and she had even been taking the moment to color her blonde hair with a red marker—and only now did Shiki realize they all should have been there with her, seeing what she saw.

There was a woman with short, magenta hair—and in a turquoise outfit—flying above everyone else, just as Hype had said, but no one seemed to notice her.

She appeared to be summoning something towards her, and if Shiki had had to explain what the pattern of it looked like as she saw it, she would've said waves.

As the "waves" rippled towards the laughing, delirious looking woman, all the humans milling about fell into a deep sleep.

That was all it took for all five girls to pull out their change devices, and to begin creating the Sailor Senshi.

"Mercury Star Power, Make-Up!" shouted Coco, followed surely by Hype, Raimu, and Eri yelling the same things, but for Mars, Jupiter, and Venus instead.

Shiki was the last to find the nerve to transform—what else was new?—but finally finding her strength (for Shiki knew that her vacation about worrying about the vampires was now over, as the wings this woman sported reminded her of things she'd seen with Lollipop Man and Sudoneku), she pulled the Crystal from her shirt and yelled, "Moon Crystal Power, Make-Up!"

At last, she was pulled up into the air along with her companions—white and pink light began appearing over Shiki, just as the energy began trying to tie the red ribbon at her back.

Coco, meanwhile, seemed to be trying to find her way out of bubbles, Hype was dipping under flames that encircled her, Rhyme was trying to reach out for lightning above her, and Eri—dear, precious Eri—was getting the beads around her waist that could make her "Venus Love Me Chain".

The tiara finally appearing on Shiki's head; she landed on the ground and found herself nearly posing with her best friends.

But at the last minute she stopped herself and then told them not to do that, either.

If any conscious being had been watching them nearby, they probably would've looked like a squabbling group of cheerleaders messing up a routine, but Shiki knew it was for the best.

So far, they'd yet to give this new assailant an indication that they were on their trail, and Shiki wanted to keep it that way.

"Yeah, because clinking my way over to this woman in these uncomfortable high heels is a _much_ better idea to not spook her," Hype said, with a sigh.

Shiki resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at Mars, as all five of them _clinked_ their way over towards the woman, as Hype had said.

"At least this gives us an excuse to help people before things get crazy," Rhyme inserted, righting a dark-skinned man who looked like he'd been about to fall head-first into the fish-catching tank without her help.

Shiki smiled.

Raimu truly was something to behold when she wanted to be. Usually one would have thought that Rhyme would not have the strength within her to lift up a man twice her size, but she took her job very seriously and so she managed it.

Shiki figured that following her brother around—skateboarding all the time before she'd become Sailor Jupiter—also helped in making Rhyme not easily bent to other's wills, or their dismissing of her.

"Venus Love Chain, Encircle!" Eri called suddenly, trying to stab at the vampire above them with the steel of her blazing-hot weapon, it seemed.

Shiki was somewhat taken aback. She'd thought they'd all agreed to wait in their attack.

And besides, the vampire hadn't truly done anything dastardly yet. She'd just made everyone fall asleep, and for all they knew maybe she just wanted to give everyone pleasant dreams?

It wasn't at all likely, Shiki knew, but she still had hope.

"Eri, what-"

But Shiki didn't get to finish that question, because before she knew it, the woman was descending upon them and shooting bullet after bullet their way.

This was easier to dodge than it could've been, since the Sailor Senshi were still weaving between skyscrapers and the vampire woman was still somewhat hovering in the sky.

At one point, though, Shiki had to remove her tiara in order to deflect a bullet with it.

And she thanked Sudoneku, wherever he was, for not having broken it when he touched it, because otherwise she would've been dead right now.

Shiki breathed heavily, as she hid behind a glass window on the side of a building. Having blocked that stray round, she'd used a lot of her arm muscles and now they were shaky and tensing because of the strain.

She hated the idea of hiding like this; Shiki didn't want the woman to come and find her here, and shoot at her in front of the window—so that shards of glass rained onto the innocents in the café just behind her—but she had to admit that she was somewhat afraid.

Not of whatever they were facing now, per se… but that if she continued this fight, she'd be in a war against Sudoneku and Shiki didn't want that.

"Eri," Shiki hissed, when the redhead finally caught up to her, and stood in front of her princess to try and block her. "What was that? Didn't you hear me? We were supposed to wai-"

"I wasn't going to risk it, Shiki," Eri whispered back, not getting mad at _her_ in the slightest, which made Shiki feel despicable for having just been short in her temper herself. "Your eyes were glazing over, like they did with that bastard Joshua the other day, and I didn't want you to fall into another trance!"

Shiki blinked. So Eri _had_ been somewhat aware of what was happening with her. Really, Shiki knew that she should've realized it—that was what best friends were for, wasn't it?—but she was still somewhat flabbergasted.

"Eri, I'm so sorry. I-"

"Don't be, Shiki. You were given powers this time around so that you _can_ protect yourself and make your own decisions, but you still mean so much to me, my princess. And I'll look out for you no matter what. Especially since she was carrying a picture of you, did you see that? You're the target for-"

"Mars Celestial Fire, Surround!"

At that, Shiki and Eri wrapped up their conversation toot-sweet, moved out into the open again, and tried to figure out where Hype had run off to.

It was no easy thing, because it was starting to get dark out in the city and the Moon was even peeking out on the horizon.

If only she could see as well in her element as she had once been able to, Shiki thought, feeling completely disappointed.

"Well, well, well. I got a pretty little blonde girl here. I gotta tell you, kid. I'm tempted to kill you, 'cause you seem like a fan of the White Angels to me, but you're not the one I'm looking for, so I'm just going to use you as a hostage, blondie."

"Sailor Mars, no!" Coco was hollering—the first one to note that the vampire had lifted Mars, and had her wings wrapped around her in such a way that she couldn't move.

Coco was absolutely enraged, and Shiki could hardly blame her. Coco was usually the one to use illusion to confuse their enemies, wasn't she?

And now… and now it seemed as though some sort of illusion had been used against _them_ to get Hype into this situation.

Hype wasn't going down without a fight, though, Shiki could see—as the princess herself tried to aim her tiara in a way that would free Hype from her captor, but not harm her.

The girl had summoned the sword… that she'd apparently stolen from Venus, to jab at the vampire woman with, but unfortunately it was only the blunt edge of it. And Pink-Hair was fighting tooth and nail to try and keep the blade Mars was carrying far, far away from her.

"Mercury," Jupiter said, walking in a certain angle until she was just below where Mars was, as if she was getting ready to jump at a certain trajectory. "This will work, right? If you use bubbles to blind that- that bitch, I can leap up and grab Mars?"

Coco was nodding her head, and she peculiarly seemed no longer upset. Perhaps she was just trying to keep her head now? Shiki wondered.

Some of her optimism at their plan to save Mars slipping into her voice, Coco began talking like a Valley Girl again and listened to Rhyme. "Like, Mercury Ice Bubbles, Freeze!"

Mercury had crossed her arms and just as she did, a deep mist appeared.

Jupiter was rearing up to go and nab Mars, but before she could something went terribly wrong.

"Sudoneku?" Shiki choked out, trying to make sense of the scene that was now playing out in front of her, but failing to. "Why do you- why do you have Jupiter?!"

Just as Sailor Moon had said, Sudoneku had come out of the ether, and was now holding a struggling Jupiter in his arms, as he summoned more of that fire magic to his fingertips again and held it at Rhyme's neck.

Shiki resisted the urge to scream. She'd jumped the gun in saying that Sudoneku hadn't betrayed her before, hadn't she?

"Sorry, Stalker," He said then, as Rhyme squirmed in his arms, Mars almost fell out of the vampire woman's, and Coco and Eri looked at Shiki, aghast. "Things have gotten a bit crazy. So let Uzuki have Mars up there, and I _promise_ we'll leave her unharmed, or we'll fight you and take _both_ Mars and Jupiter."

"Fine, Sudoneku," Shiki replied, surprising even herself that she was saying this, as she bowed mockingly to the boy she'd clearly been a fool to try and protect.

The darkness of the night cast her in shadow, and Shiki thought that maybe even her soul was darkening that way at this news.

"You win. Now get Mars out of here before she falls to her death, please."

And she was very close to it, Shiki saw, as she looked up at her friend and saw that the Uzuki woman was just holding onto her by the tips of her fingers now.

If Shiki was reading the look on Hype's face exactly, she seemed to want to die, then to be a prisoner of the enemy's, but Shiki wouldn't allow that to happen.

"Good decision, Stalker," and Sudoneku really did seem to be complimenting her, Shiki thought, heartbroken. He then pushed Jupiter into her arms, who was instantly reprimanding Shiki for her choice.

Sudoneku flew up into the air with his own wings, grabbed Hype's other hand, and began flying off with her and Uzuki both—Uzuki sparing the girls one last, winning wink before she was gone.

As much as Shiki wanted to, she didn't let any tears fall.

Instead, she went home and tried to plan—all the while that she was pretending to be okay for her mom and dad.

…

"She dropped her pen…" Rhyme was saying at their Sailor Senshi meeting the next day. Ms. Nyan looked completely dejected, as she seemed to try and hide the white of her paws by sitting on them.

Was it that seeing that color reminded her too much of the ashen-haired master that she'd just lost?

"You know," Rhyme continued on, when everyone just gave her blank looks, not being able to understand what she'd said at all. "The one she always used to write poetry with? 'If you want the freedom to do anything, or go anywhere, write books': that's the idea that Hype always lived by, so I had to collect this for her for when she comes back. I had to!"

"You did a good job, Rhyme," Coco answered, being the first one to pipe in. "I couldn't just leave things as they were, either, so I… Like, I had to get her some sunscreen so she can go out with us more, without having to worry about getting burnt. My gosh, does that need to be a thing."

For the first time since Hype's disappearance, Shiki smiled: Leave it to Coco's own awkward way of trying to do something light, and to try and find a way that Hype could pal around with them easier when she came back.

"She'll be fine," Eri said then, but she seemed to be trying to convince herself more than anyone else.

Shiki's heart went out to her.

"Remember back on the Moon Kingdom, when she was kidnapped—even before she got her powers—and she got out, and was able to talk circles around the guard so that he thought his master had let her go and that if he didn't step aside right then she'd have his job? Hype will do that again soon, you know it. And she'll be back here as fast as her dainty little feet will let her be."

"Eri…" Shiki said at last, not wanting to rain on her friend's parade but also hating the mess she was making at Coco's house, that was going to be their base from now on, it seemed. "I love you, honey, but you're spilling lemon juice all over the table."

Coco hadn't cut them into pretty shapes this time—she was too depressed to—but she'd still gotten them all lemon tea again.

And Eri—in trying to squeeze as much out of the lemon that she could to put into her drink—had actually started spraying some of the fruit onto the tray carrying a cake, so lost in her tirade had she been.

"Anyway, I owe you guys all an apology," Shiki told her friends, looking them each in the eye in turn and daring them to judge her for her horrible, horrible evasion. "I… I ran into CAT again the other day. I _tried_ to run into him, actually.

"Eri realized some of what was going on with me, I think, but… Our new classmate, Joshua, is also a vampire. He… he controlled me, to get me to fill out his stupid test for him, and I… I was mortified.

"Sudoneku—that's his real name, by the way, or close enough to it, anyway—was pretty good to me when I met _him_ , so I wanted to make sure that he hadn't sent that Yoshiya guy after me. And maybe to see if he knew a way for me to fend against him. I… I trusted him. But now I know that trust was misplaced.

"If I… If I had just handled things differently, we wouldn't be missing a friend right now, I'm so sorry, girls. I'm so sorry!"

The three girls embraced Shiki across the table—or held onto her hands if that was easier—and for a moment they just prayed together, and tried to sense Hype through their Planet Power.

Shiki thought she saw Hype in a cell somewhere, talking to Sudoneku, in a musty, dimly lit hallway, but she couldn't make out what they were saying.

She knew, without a shadow of a doubt, though, that if he hurt her—or turned Hype into a vampire—she would without a doubt kill Sudoneku.

"I'm going to have Beat go to your school and watch over you, Shiki. Sometimes I do think whoever said that 'the pen's more powerful than the sword' was an idiot—not to disrespect Hype, of course—so Beat's strength will make you feel better around this 'Joshua' person. And who knows, maybe if you're comfortable around him, you can discreetly spy and get us some information about Hype?"

"Sounds good, Rhyme. Sounds good." Shiki partly lied.

She understood and liked where Rhyme was coming from, but she couldn't help feeling useless lately, too.

Who knew? Maybe she'd always felt that way, since she was the princess these girls were supposed to protect, but she was more than ever sensing her own failings now.

"And why don't you go ahead and take Ms. Nyan with you?" Eri asked Shiki with a smile, but Shiki could tell that it was costing Eri a lot to place it there.

Eri also looked sloppy for the first time ever, not that Shiki could blame her. She herself was having a difficult time getting herself together these days, when her world had been turned upside down for the umpteenth time.

"Ms. Nyan will probably be so lonely without Hype. If you take her home with you, she'll at least have Mr. Mew to keep her company, right?"

Eri winked at this, and it made the two cats shift uncomfortably, which was good for a laugh for everyone.

Shiki couldn't really get behind it, though, because in her liking Sudoneku she had done worse than she ever could've.


End file.
